Naruto: A Feudal Fairy Tale
by NekoNarutard666
Summary: An epic of 500 years back unfolds once again
1. Down The Demon's Hole

A/N: I do not own any part of Naruto or its characters, locations, titles, or attacks mentioned. If the title "A Feudal Fairy Tale" does in fact copyrighted to Inuyasha, then the title belongs to Rumiko Takahashi. I do however own the particular fairy tale mentioned here, and all it's characters and monsters. Just a work of fiction people. Thanks!

**Naruto: A Feudal Fairy Tale**

_Chapter One: Down the Demon's Hole_

"Once upon a time, back in the feudal era of Konohagakure, there lived a beautiful, young Konoichi named Ai. Back in those days, demons roamed our village as plainly as humans did, and do now. However, no matter how comfortable these demons of all classes felt in our land, they were cruel and blood thirsty, often for the blood of children, so it seemed. No human could destroy the demons, not even lay a mark or leave a bruise on them. One day, when their Queen, The Demon Lover Saya, rose from the underworld to reek more havoc than any demon could ever dream of doing, she laid a curse on the five year old Ai, transforming her into Saya's shadow, in return to spare the life of her baby sister Kannako (her parents were already killed). It was a heavy burden laid upon a small girl, but what Saya didn't know was that mostly, your shadow can be your worse enemy. In becoming Saya's shadow, and after years of rigoress training both in swordsmanship and ninjutsu, Ai soon came to realize that she could kill the demons that haunted her beloved Konohagakure with ease. This upset Saya to a high level, so she created only a handful of powerful demon minions; more powerful than any demon she created before. They plotted to seek revenge on Ai, and continue to destroy Konoha, soon after moving on to the rest of the world. A young priestess, Ruri, who died fifty years in the past during this era, over heard The Demon Lover's coo from Hell, and took to find Ai and report what she's heard. An epic battle in Konoha history, between the shadow and the organic, between lightness and darkness, was soon to take place. Nothing would stop them.

Quickly, our heroine Ai journeyed throughout the resources of her village to find any warriors who could be willing and able to assist her in fending off Saya and her thugs, or perhaps even destroy some (though the likely hood of this was low). Sadly, she found none. In the shadows, Ruri watched Ai's training and desperation at finding her own partners, and seeing all too how miserably she was failing. Then inspiration struck the dead teenage priestess, whose eyes were no longer there, instead only two black voids. She would find the help of Kanna, her close friend at the Temple of the Earth, where she once practiced in. Immediately, without informing neither Ai, Kannako, or any other resident of the village of her plan, she sought after the Temple of the Earth, as it's location constantly moved in an eerie mist, no one psychic could ever pin point it's next location or when it would move again. This would certainly be a periless journey.

For many risen suns Ruri paced across the Land of Fire, trying to relocate her once home. At last she found the temple, and hurried inside to meet her hold companion. Unfortunately, her friend has aged considerably, something Ruri should have known since fifty years ago when they were in training to become priestesses, both were fourteen years old. But she did indeed have the rare Holy power inside of her, just like Ruri, and could in fact help in the battle, even if it wasn't a considerable amount. Not only that, but the Holy power was also passed down to her twenty year old granddaughter, Botan who was also a priestess of the Temple of the Earth. She gladly volunteered to join the fight as well. Without another moment to waste, the trio headed straight for Konohagakure with haste. No one knew exactly if Saya and her minions would stay true to their governed word and strike out in a year (at that point, four more months). Something sinister and yet beautiful would coming closer to climax in Konoha.

When the last month arrived, along with our new found trio who would assist the first hero of Konoha, arrived with no action been taken place in the village, Ruri explained with the utmost enthusiasm to Ai and Kannako of her priestess friends, and the power all three of them possessed. Ai was overjoyed at the jubilant news, and that her young sister Kannako had already exceeded in medicine. Together, all five of these courageous women would challenge the Gods; them against the world with nothing but positive hope they would come out victorious."

"Did the girls defeat Saya?" asked a young girl, no more than six, who was listening attentively at Lady Tsunade's story, as was the rest of the rather large group of children.

"It's never been told if they in fact did, or did not. Who knows, maybe none of this is real, as it's just another feudal fairy tale."

"No way!" jumped up another girl, one who seemed more hyper than the first. "Girls rule! I know incredibly strong women lived back then, and that they did have the power to take on the under world!"

Iruka chuckled, standing against a wall in the back of the room, watching his younger students enjoy Lady Tsunade's tale. His tilted toward Kakashi's, who stood to the right of him. "Its nice kids can look up to these influential characters."

"Yeah, most likely they're better than the people you see on TV. I just wish people would find a new story to tell; this one's older than the hills." He too chuckled.

"I wish the story was true, however. It'd be nice to know of more greatness that spawned from our village. If only…"


	2. And Then There Was Five

A/N: WARNING!!! Character death and mature scenes take place in this chapter (and may be look back on in future chapters). I wanted to not only warn you about these, but to say that in no way was this chapter and this particular scene in the intentions of character bashing. Honestly, I love, love, LOVE, love this character, but his or her death plays an important role in the story. Also, the "mature scene" (and you'll know it when you see it) in no way does it reflect on my personal opinions or beliefs in religion or otherwise. Remember, this is just a story; none of this ever happened and will never in the series (as far as I'm aware of, but really, when you read it you'll know). Thank you and for mature audiences ONLY!!

_Chapter Two: And Then There Was Five_

Ayame swept away the passing dust from the porch, flying off into misty clouds. She looked forward to the dead and deserted forest that surrounded her and the New Temple of the Earth. New because the original one drifted along with the wind as usual, and never landed again. Often Ayame, the only priestess left in the New Temple of the Earth, found herself daydreaming, wondering what the original temple was like. But alas, she only had the new broken down temple, and the five statues of the legendary heroes: Ai, Kannako, Ruri, Botan, and Kanna. Some say there souls are forever encased in these carvings of concrete, that Saya cast an evil spell while she lay dying. However, seeing as the true outcome of the story was never told, no one could be certain if this was fact or hopeful wishing. Nevertheless, that tidbit had always been retold and believed by many.

Tsunade has heard some pretty crazy stories in all her years, but none like some of the ones that went along with the Feudal Fairy Tale. For instance, Saya still walked the earth in the form of a man, or that both Saya's and Ai's swords, The Masamune, were buried underneath the ocean floor below the equator. Her favorite being that a black lotus blossom will appear out of thin air to the strongest warrior in all of Konohagakure. _She_ certainly hasn't received any black lotus blossoms…

Naruto's mouth hung agape, his morning yawn long and loud as usual. He scratched his golden blonde hair, then crawled out of bed and headed straight for the kitchen. "Man, I got a hankering for some ramen…wish Iruka-sensei was around…" As he walked, he passed the framed picture of both he and Iruka Umino, eating ramen at Ichiraku Ramen Bar, laughing and smiling. He bowed quickly to the photo as he walked passed. "Sometimes I really miss going there with you, Iruka-sensei…"

Five months earlier, when Naruto had another one of his cravings for ramen, he went straight for Iruka's apartment, to find his beloved teacher absent. Naruto shrugged it off, assuming Iruka had a previous engagement. As he walked to the restaurant, he heard the whisperings of his fellow villagers. Every time he looked in their direction, their speech became hushed and they turned away. It wasn't until Naruto walked another half mile up the main road that he found a crowd of jonins gathered, one looking nervously at the other, voices so slurred together that Naruto couldn't depict who was saying what, or what was being said for that matter, or even what they were gathered around. Then, he spotted his current teacher, Kakashi Hatake.

"Kakashi-sensei!" he called out to him, making the man turn around to see him. "What's going on?"

"Naruto…"

"Yeah, what is it?" he stood on his tiptoes to try and see what was happening, but Kakashi prevented him from doing so, and took him aside.

"Naruto, we need to talk."

"About what Kakashi-sensei?"

"Naruto, Iruka is…dead."

Startled, Naruto, for once in his life, was at a lost for words. He kept blinking over and over, making sure he didn't slip into some kind of daydream. "What…? What!?" He pushed pass Kakashi, and headed right for the circle. It was there he found a spectacle that would never leave his mind, a horrible image that damaged his psyche little by little. In the middle stood a metallic crucifix, stained with red blood. Strapped on said crucifix was Iruka, being held up by a thousand strands of barbed wire. His eyes were missing; only dark crimson sockets were left behind. His fingers were sliced off, his teeth her knocked out completely, and blood oozed out of every pore and slit on his body. Most of his torso area was also cut up, from the middle of his stomach down hanging onto his upper body by a few threads of skin and muscle, exposing most of his organs (some laid on the ground, the rest vanished). Through his chest's left side, no doubting puncturing his heart, was a steel crucifix, thin as straw, dripping his Iruka's own red liquid. That same liquid smeared and form puddles all around his feet. Who could have done such a thing…?

With haste Naruto shook the image away in his head. That was five months ago, Iruka's dead, he's buried, it's over. But really, it wasn't. The killer was never caught, but also never struck again. Only one possibility lingered in Naruto's mind: someone was after Iruka, for some unknown reason. He looked over his shoulder once again at the small table near his front door at the picture, when he noticed something there that wasn't before. Five black lotus blossoms.

"Okay, I have my straw hat, my basket, and…ah yes! My money," Ayame checked through her pockets, and once she found her pocket book she headed out the door, Konoha-bound. It wasn't an incredibaly long walk; only about four miles, but Ayame enjoyed the exercise. Besides, she needed a few food items and some fresh flowers for the five. Cheerfully she headed down the dirt road that would lead her to Konohagakure. _"In search of a new land, let's build a new house, by neatly gathering hay to thatch the roof…" _She always sung with such happiness, she did her chores with such happiness, and mostly did everything with joy. Nothing in the world could ever put a care in the mind and heart of Ayame. Before she knew it, on the sixth repeat of her song, she made it to Konohagakure, continuing toward the Yamanaka Flower Shop. On her way she spotted a blonde haired boy with loud orange clothes whistling as he walked down the same path as she in the opposite direction. She noticed with great detail only one thing about the boy: the five black lotus blossoms he carried.

"No…it couldn't be…" but could it?


	3. The Girl and Her Dead Dolls

_Chapter Three: The Girl and Her Dead Dolls_

"Oh crap! Oh crap! I'm more late than Kakashi-sensei on a good day! Believe it!" Naruto cried out, rushing through the busy streets of Konohagakure. He decided to take a shortcut through the park to his meeting destination. As he was half way through, paying no mind to the dog walkers and the elderly women feeding ducks, a certain young lady sitting on a park bench caught his eye. Nothing was particularly special about her: a girl with long black hair knotted into a messy bun, yellow eyes, black Victorian dress, and dolls. Five to be exact.

An unseen fate prevented Naruto from preceeding forward once her eyes caught his. That same fate drew him closer, as he begun to walk to the girl. He stopped dead in his tracks once he was in her front view.

She was currently occupying her time with a particular doll; short brown hair, blue eyes, black clothes, but stopped her work when Naruto reached her, while the remaining four (looked like three priestesses and one normal girl) laid limp next to her thigh on the bench. She set the brush that once dragged through the hair of the blue eyed doll on top of the others, and stood up before him.

"Hello," she spoke.

He remained silent.

She placed the doll in front of his face, her eyes meeting his equally blue ones. "Have you seen this woman?"

He remained unreplient, studying her self confident and malicious coy face, only shaking his head. Something about this woman seemed eerily familiar.

"I see. Heed my warning young man, she is a venomous vixen, without a doubt. Watch yourself." With that, she quickly gathered her remaining dolls, and took only a few steps in the opposite direction for the exit. But when Naruto finally regained more self control over his body, and turned his head to her direction, she had vanished. Suddenly, the sky above, became overpowered by dark clouds, and in the distance the warning clash of thunder struck. _Who was she?_ Naruto queried. The black lotus blossoms in his white knuckled grip shivered, though the wind currently wasn't blowing, making Naruto even more curious. The voice of that same woman found its way into his psyche: _You're late. _As if on que, the rain poured down and the lightening majectically clashed with the surface of the planet.

Angerily, the down pour showed no signs of letting up anytime soon. "What is it, my beautiful planet?" Ayame asked the grey heavens. Without further ado, she moved forward from her once standing point in the courtyard of the New Temple of the Earth, heading for the hero's resting place. When finally she met the statues there, after enduring the relentless two mile walk through the muddy up hill dirt road, she read the stone marker buried deep into the ground, visible enough to read the enscripture texted hundreds of years before. Falling to her knees, she read it aloud: "'And let he who finds the holy lotus blossoms be released from his weariness of battle, for the sacred event of atonement will again arise, and be greatly enhanced through a more miraculous power, as the goddess will rise once again.'"

For a long time, the quote never made much sense to her, but now after seeing the child with the flowers, it began to clear away its fog. Staying on her knees in the black mud, she looked to the clouds once again, placed her hands into the praying position, and prayed, did she pray, for mercy when the boy, and anyone else who may be dragged into this apocolyptic battle. And for the planet, as well.

Naruto never made it to training that day. He turned for home, and phoned Kakashi on his cell phone, proclaiming he was too ill to make it in. Boy, did he really have a knot in his stomach and a pounding in his temples. The picture laid next to his head on the pillow, turning it sideways every now and then to look at the image. If Iruka-sensei was around, he would come by to Naruto's apartment, cheerful and kind as always, holding up a plastic bag of take-out ramen in all sorts of flavors, and stay with him till he feel asleep, sometimes staying all through the night watching over his young friend. He missed it, and intended for the ritual to continue, though the moment was lacking talking and ramen. And Iruka in body rather than spirit. A knock came from the door, startling Naruto from memory lane. He jumped to his feet and ran to look through the peep hole, seeing Sakura Haruno on the other side. _Oh boy! A cute girl coming to_ my _place with ramen! _Without taking another moment, he opened the door to greet her, maybe stealing a kiss (if he were lucky and Pakkun could fly, of course). But all he saw when the door creaked open was still Sakura, but she sat upwards against the wall opposite his front door in the hall, body devoid of all blood and turned a grey color, eyes stuck open and rolled back, mouth agate, dried blood splattered randomly throughout the outer of her skin and clothes. He fell to his knees, shaking like a leaf, when some circular symbol he'd never seen before appeared in his head, along with the mysterious girl's menacing eyes boring deep into his soul, screaming out "_Hiraku!"_ in an echo. A thick, yellow substance forced its way out through his mouth, the chunks especially hard to cough up, a great deal of saliva pouring along with it. It splashed and spread all across the wooden public floor, and once the ordeal finally ended (it took literally three minutes for the vomit to pass through) he collapsed to unconsciousness, falling into his mess, his breath causing the liquid to bubble along his open mouth, some reenetering. The omen, vision, or whatever the hell it was disappeared, and all was quiet once again.

Naruto came to forty-five minutes later, laying his back and staring at the ceiling in his bed. Beside him on a nearby chair sat Sakura, wringing out a wet cloth in a large bowel filled with what he assumed cool water on his bedside table. She glanced over, seeing his eyes open, a smile of relief spreading across her lovely face. "Naruto! You're awake! Kakashi-sensei!" she called towards the front door, Kakashi on his knees cleaning Naruto's regurgitation from the hallway. He had finished, carrying arm fulls of soiled paper towels, smiling at his weak pupil.

"Thank goodness." You couldn't see the lower half of Kakashi's face due to his mask, and his right eye was covered by his leaf village head band, but his one exposing eye spoke the truth from behind his masks and from his true feelings.

"Did I really puke _that_ much?"

"Yeah," he paused to chuckle, "Never knew you had it in you."

"We knew Iruka-sensei use to come over and keep an eye on you when you were sick, and now that he's gone, we were just worried…" tears began to weld up in Sakura's eyes. Naruto couldn't help but grin at Sakura's expression of love, slight as it may be.

"Thanks guys, I appreciate this."

"What do you think could be wrong?" asked Kakshi, sitting on the corner of Naruto's bed after disposing of the dirtied paper towels, Sakura reclaiming her spot in the chair.

He flashed back to the strange symbol and the face of the girl he met earlier, especially the girl's face. Eyes glowering right in his, though it was seen in his mind, pupils blacker than eternal darkness, skinny and vertical in their placement, gold against blue. He shuddered. "Not sure, probably just the stomach flu."

Sakura placed her hands on his naked shoulders (he just noticed, they most likely removed it, considering he fell into his own oils) and erged him backwards. "Sleeo now. We've arranged it so that we can stay over night, just to be sure. Lady Tsunade will be here in the morning. Just sleep now." Kakashi nodded in agreement, however Naruto felt like protesting; wanting to stay up with his friends a little longer. Once his head hit the pillow, it was lights out and he quickly fell asleep.


	4. The Song of a Dead Priestess

_Chapter Four: The Song of a Dead Priestess_

Sakura dreamt deeply that night, lying on the uncomfortable spare (fold up) futon in Naruto's living room. Mostly, she tossed and turned for hours, until she was struck with an unexpected wave of fatigue, and drifted off within minutes. In her dream, she was being chased by an invisible fiend, in the same forest where she, Naruto, and Sasuke were faced with their first task of steal two bells from their new mentor Kakashi. Close to the end of her breath, she stopped at a clearing, a clearing she wasn't even sure existed in the real forest (and she knew that place like the back of her hand via the numerous trainings held here). There in the center of the clearing a priestess with semi-long black hair back was turned to her, dressed in ancient style cleric clothes, a wooden and stringed instrument lain horizontal on her thighs. Daintily she plucked at every cord in accordance to her song:

"_Shine, bright morning light_

_Now in the air the spring is coming_

_Sweet blowing wind_

_Singing down the hills and valleys,"_

Her melody, both sweet and sad, rang through the four corners of her memory; somewhere in the distant past this song was displayed for her, but the whom and where was still an unknown.

"_Keep your eyes on me_

_Now we're on the edge of Hell_

_Dear my love, sweet morning light_

_Wait for me you've gone much farther, too far"_

No, this was no normal piece of poetry, this was a message. A sign if you will. With its dark and ominous presence, Sakura determined nothing good was to come.

No, this wasn't a memory either. This was a lesson, and she happened to memorize everything to know without trying, or without knowing what any of it meant. She must spread this word, smear this warning of Hell finally rising, that a savior of it will come to be, that we need to protect each other instead of only protecting ourselves. Should this be was the priestess tried to say, of course.

"_Shine, bright morning light_

_Now in the air the spring is coming_

_Sweet blowing wind_

_Singing down the hills and valleys,"_

The priestess had yet to reveal her face. Curiously, Sakura wanted to see it, wanted to ask properly, face to face, why she was singing this beautiful song? What did it mean? Slowly she inched towards the back of the priestess, creeping to her left side.

"_Keep your eyes on me_

_Now we're on the edge of Hell,"_

Suddenly, a wave of fear overcame Sakura, almost to powerful to prevail. Maybe she wasn't _supposed_ to see the priestess, that she had her back to her for a common good? After all, those myths and stories were always told and believed by many, they could be true, right? But Sakura's feet never received the message, and she proceeded forward.

"_Dear my love, sweet morning light,"_

At last, Sakura jumped in front of the priestess's sitting position, only to hear her own body release a shocking and breathless gasp, never once actually consuming the face of the priestess, falling to her back, eyes now only locked on the black mid night sky. She hit the grass with a thump, head turned and eyes shut, a trail of dribble making it's way down her face, hearing only the rest of the song:

"_Wait for me, you've gone much farther, too far…"_

And the song repeated itself.

Song lyrics to "Fake Wings" (sung by Yuki Kajiura) belong to .hack//Sign.

Also, the lyrics mentioned Chapter Two (_Obokuri-ee Umi_) belong to Samurai Champloo.


End file.
